eight
by Flower of the Flame
Summary: a mushi-shi!au toshin. toshio is a travelling mushi master, and seishin is a priest who he keeps visiting. (set in the mushi-shi universe but i guess it's completely unnecessary to read that series)


The contents of an unlabeled scroll found in the false bottom of a drawer. Assorted trinkets were found along with it.

_1. He smells like earth and pine._

Sometimes like the sea, Seishin thinks. But it's most often the forest, or the mountains. It reminds him that the mushi master is as much his as the flowers, or the leaves are.

When they are together, he kisses Toshio hard enough to leave bruises around his collarbone, and on his hands and legs and torso, to assert his dominance and ownership. But those fade in time, and are almost never on his body when he comes back around again. He likes to think that Toshio comes back around that time, to renew their contract—it'd only be cheapened by writing it down on paper. But, it's awfully hard to tell.

He comes and goes as he pleases. Sometimes he stays for weeks, though those visits are infrequent. Sometimes he forgets to come for months. Seishin secretly dreads the day he ceases to come at all.

_2. He has a strange admiration for the hidden world_

It's more like an odd reverence. It's a collection of things most people don't see. They sit on the rooftop, sometimes, and watch the shadowy figures dance and oscillate along the night sky. Toshio smokes one of his cigarettes, and they are silent. The other world is just beyond his fingertips. Subtle isn't quite the word for it, but he has no idea how to go about describing it otherwise.

The have wine more often than they do not. It's never the light-wine that reminds him so much of the man. It's always a vintage from Seishin's cellar. And Toshio tells him about the mushi in the lands beyond the foothills that Seishin lives in. Some are awe-inspiring, like the girl who can paint words into existence. And others frighten him so completely that he cannot sleep alone, for nights afterwards. He's thankful that he does not have to.

_3. He's terrible at cards_

"Damn." He frowns. Seishin seems to have won most of his clothes off of him.

_4. His western-style clothing has strange fastenings_

There is much to be said about a priest fumbling with buttons. He still has difficulty undoing them, but it does not take him nearly as much time as it did that first night.

_5. He's a charming con-man_

He smiles more than he needs to, and he has sold Seishin one too many useless things. Hairclips, colored glass, and mermaid's claws that he can't bear to throw out now line his shelves.

But it makes Seishin wonder. How many people does he act kind for? And kiss? How many people buy his things?

There's a part of him that wishes that he wasn't bound to the parishioners. But what would he do then?

_6. He lived in a house with a wife, and possibly a child_

There are scars on his back that he doesn't talk about. And he's scared of fire. He whispers her name at night, either when he's sleeping, or when he thinks Seishin can't hear. He still hasn't figured out which one it is.

He loved Kyouko. But she's dead, and Seishin's alive. He can't help but feel a little guilty.

Sometimes he pretends that Seishin is Kyouko, and the priest can tell when he does. He kisses differently, and is more hesitant to leave. It happens with increasing frequency.

He was a doctor before he was a mushi-shi, Seishin knows. Lived in a little town that was fueled by the pearl-fishing industry, in a house that was a clinic as well. His father was a doctor, and his father before him. Toshio doesn't talk about it much, but Seishin knows. It's written in the way he carefully stitches flesh back together, and the way he wears the backpack with the wooden frame on his back.

_7. He usually leaves before Seishin wakes up_

No matter how much he wishes it otherwise.

_8. He makes the mountain less lonely_

He laughs, and he talks all night sometimes. And it's warm, with another person beside him. He gives Seishin something to write about, and rewrite after he's gone. The stories he tells Seishin are the best, he thinks.

Sometimes he attempts to play the biwa, but it never quite works out.

And other times, they take long walks together. Toshio can name all the mountain herbs, and tell poisons from their antidotes at first glance. Those nights, they usually don't make it back to bed. But Seishin thinks it's better that way. Though his body usually does not agree the morning after.

He pins Seishin's hair up, when he's too drunk to do much else.

He smiles, and kisses all of Seishin's scars, no matter how ugly the priest believes them to be. And when the lights are out, he whispers things that make the priest curl his toes, and sheepishly grin.

When he visits, they settle into a comfortable routine, disturbed only by the occasional parishioner seeking blessings.


End file.
